After the Hunt (2025), on Amazon Prime: A college professor with a dark secret. I'm in academe, and I love movies set in The Halls of Ivy. Plus it stars Will Price, who I've had a crush on since I saw his gay-subtext role in The Chair Company (seen here with his favorite drag outfits). I'm in, even with the two minutes of commercials that Amazon Prime makes you watch before the movie (in addition to the $100 per year fee).
Scene 1: Maggie, a middle-aged black woman, stares forlornly at some African art that shows a man and a woman getting it on. Actually, she's bored stiff at a faculty party while icy cool, incredibly pretentious Alma (Julia Roberts) is lecturing on how there are no universal standards of morality. Uh-oh, she's going to be a murderer.
Horndog Hank (Andrew Garfield), who is sprawled across the couch with his legs spread, grabs Maggie and says that her dissertation on performative dissent will be the best thing ever written, sure to become a classic in philosophy. But she's only given them a few passages. "You're too tight. You need to loosen up."
This shocks Arthur (Will Price) so much that he drops his drink.
Left: Garfield butt.
"I haven't decided yet."
He chides her for having self-doubts. This dissertation will make her name as the greatest philosopher of our generation, so why wait?
Hey, Michael Stuhlberg played a 26-year old grad student in "Call Me by Your Name" (2017). (He's not actually blind, those are sunglasses). Eight years later, he's playing a guy in his 70s?
Maggie has to use the restroom. Incredibly Pretentious Alma says: "Don't use the usual one -- Frederick has a project in there. Use the guest bath at the end of the hall." I'm guessing that Frederick is her son.
Scene 2: Maggie drifts folornly down the long, scary hallway, finds the bathroom, and slowly shuts the door. Whoa, horror movie tropes. Something sinister is waiting for her in there!
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Back at the party, Alma and Horndog Hank are grabbing and fondling each other. Apparently they're married, and going up for tenure at the same time.
Elderly Mentor tries to talk them out of it: "I don't want to be a contrarian, but sometimes a wish fulfilled can be more baffling than the longing."
Alma disagrees: "It's not some egoitic teleological pursuit, it's a threshhold." Professors don't talk like that.
"If you get tenure and I don't, I'll be rageful," Horndog Hank jokes while grabbing and fondling her. "Well, if you get it, and I don't, I'll be furious."
I'm expecting a scream, as Maggie is eaten by a monster. Or maybe she has offed herself, and the maid discovers her body. Nope, no scream. The only problem: No toilet paper. Looking for some, Maggie finds an envelope taped above the cleaning supplies. Inside, a handkechief, a photograph, a letter, and a newspaper article. But someone is coming, so she pockets some and puts the rest back.
More after the break